3 September

It’s been an eventful few days here and I can only hope to try and get some of it down now for all of you to read. Firstly is the first of September, which ushers in the first of fall, first day of school and so on. The first day of school is in itself quite a celebration. They have all the students dressed up in their best at the school, parents attend and it made for quite a crowd. There are speeches by the director of the school, someone from the district (I think) and the mayor spoke as well. More people spoke too, but I couldn’t pay attention to all of it, plus it wasn’t all interesting, I’ll admit. Felt like a lot of pomp and circumstance, but that is life here for holidays. Afterwards, I met up with a lot of the English teachers and other teachers and we celebrated the Day of Knowledge, which conveniently is the same day as the first day of school, ok, I’m sure it’s planned that way. So that basically involved a lot of eating, drinking and dancing with the teachers of the school, from 3 p.m. until 10 p.m. Made for somewhat of a long day, but that’ the way it goes around here, what I do for my country ☺. I had a good time (even was told I am a good dancer), however, and it was a good time to reestablish relationships with especially the English teachers as well as other teachers to make sure they knew my face.
(Quick note on dancing,I've been told I am a good dancer here. As far as I'm concerned nothing has changed and I am as bad as ever, only most people are worse dancers here. That and having people stand in a big circle and dance is still the thing to do around here.)
Still don’t know what I will be doing exactly at the school as far as a schedule, but I’m pretty sure it will involve my journalism, student government and technology teaching. If anybody knows how to use Access, a Microsoft program, or has even used it before, drop me a message, cause that was one program the director wanted to be teached and I have never ever used it for anything. Wondering how useful it would be to even bother teaching them, but I don’t write curriculum. Oh well. (Update on that too, all of that is true and I will be doing those things. Not sure about Access yet.)

Saturday saw a quieter day where I went to the bazaar in the morning where I found some excellent bread, still eating on that and bought a couple other things I had been wanting. Haven’t completely outfitted my apartment yet, but it is getting there. It is just tough to start from pretty much scratch here. Every other time I have moved in, I have at least had pretty much the bare basics to start with. I’m at bare bones now with hopes to improve it to a point where I can at least feel as if I am comfortable with the tools I have. In the evening I went out with my former host family (they were upset I hadn’t made an appearance at their place since I only live one floor above them, oops) at their friends who has become a mutual friend, Stepan Michaelovich. What made this night memorable was that he had purchased some Tabasco sauce. I guess it is expensive here since he paid close to $10 to buy a small bottle. No way you could get me to do that, although if you sent me some, I’d gladly accept it. It was quite the experience as they got a chance to try it out and see the spiciness of it. I had to almost stifle my laughter. Never been a huge fan of it and it’s spiciness, but it was a nice change to say the least. But I gotta admit, having Tabasco be something of a delicacy was fun.

Today saw me out on the road again going to the village of Hirnik, my apologies to however thinks it should be spelled differently, please correct me and I can change it. There I met up with a friend of mine and her sister to go explore some places where there had been coal mining in the past. It was definitely interesting, I’ll try to get some pictures up from the trip. I’ll be honest, I was hoping to explore caves, but this is more of a strip mining operation from what I could tell, so no exploring mysterious caves that could spell my doom. So much for my attempt at being the next Indiana Jones, maybe another time. The only man-eating beasts I had to deal with were mosquitoes who were thick. The genius I am wore shorts and did not bring bug spray to fight them off, result, I counted 16 different mosquito bites on my legs.

But it was still a lot of fun seeing what I did and hanging out with them, trying to pick blackberries and talking with their mother. Also got to pick on Oksana a little bit in front of her older sister and mother when they were preparing lunch, her mother got a kick out of that. I, of course could do no more than sit and observe, and make incisive comments, such is life as a guy. Another thing you will probably see reflected on in the pictures is we, well I, found a sparrow in the middle of the road I almost stepped on. Ended up picking it up and we were all concerned about the health of it, maybe a broken leg, wing, or both. I saw what looked like something had attacked it on it’s head. Oksana and Ira tried to give it water and got it out of the sun, I basically watched, gave my two cents and thought to myself the poor bird was a goner although I also took the most pictures. We were about ready to set it down and proceed in our rather vain attempt to collect blackberries, didn’t get very many, when it almost flew out of Oksana’s hands. I took it from her and it proceeded to leave a present on my hands before flying across the road. Ira’s only comment at that point was, “well, I don’t think any of us expected that,” I’ll agree with that. But we were all able to leave the situation happy and not worry about a cat eating it immediately or trying to take it home.

Straight from there I went to meet up with Stepan and my host mom to watch a football game, which the team we were rooting for ended up winning. After the game it was some tension, although I couldn’t exactly follow what happened, something along the lines of my host mother didn’t like what our coach had said, but no guarantees on that. Went out with a group afterwards at a café where I got to meet a bunch of new people who I don’t know the names of and spend time with them being the American. My favorite game. Got a ride home with Stepan in a car and got grilled by the driver for not sure exactly what, something along the lines of politics and my being in Ukraine, maybe it’s better I don’t understand everything, but at the end of the ride, the driver was better, I think, and we left with him inviting me to his house, or something along those lines. Just goes along the lines of people wondering why Americans are living in their country doing what some people may see as insubstantial. But it can also be seen as building grass roots support for ideas and people that wouldn’t otherwise be there. I think he had some interest in politics too, which as a Peace Corps volunteer we’re not supposed to delve into and I just don’t have enough information to provide a solid answer anyway. It made for an interesting conversation nonetheless. Well, it is almost 10 here and I have been going all day, hopefully I can get this posted quickly so you can all get your update. Best wishes and as always, feel free to drop me a comment, email, etc. I always love to hear from anyone and everyone.